Dusk at Quarry BayTammy Lai-Ming Ho 译
傍晚在鲗鱼涌钟国强
PoemWiki—After “Quarry Bay in the Afternoon,”
in honour of Leung Ping-kwan
——仿《中午在鲗鱼涌》向也斯致意
This moment I am walking into a crowd
Too many are walking in the same direction
Emerging from underground
Marks from years ago seem to have been brushed off
In front of me rises one more overpass
Streetlamps transmit cold air
In a shop advertising congee raw or boiled
Someone carrying claypot rice disappears
Someone looks at the glass
The frozen street scene or himself
This moment is only a mood
Dragging daylight’s limping doubts into dark alleys
Someone patiently folds a cardboard box
Someone blankly stares at the spaces columns cut open
I stop in front of the traffic lights looking at the lights
Learning that the facts are there
Learning that the night sky between dense buildings
Dare not speak lightly or be lenient
Diners in the Seventh Heaven Restaurant are sparse
Someone’s still cutting flowers in the stall
A deluge of fallen branches, leaves and old speeches
Fine sounds repeat from beneath your feet
Old men use synthetic calligraphy brushes
Tremblingly tracing over words from ancient antiquity
One thousand flowers one thousand colours
This moment I look at the road
And see someone looking back at me on the other side
This moment I gaze at the glass windows on office buildings
Ju Ming practises t’ai chi in a spacious lobby
Those empty windows on trams
Let the street scenes pass through
Stoves emit benevolent steam
I can’t rub off the rust on mirrors
Sometimes ding ding is an alarm
Reckless people turn around and swear
Sometimes it’s just loneliness
Like raindrops touching hands on a cold night
This moment I walk out of a funeral parlour
Squeezed as if in a revolving stair
One thousand people one thousand thoughts
The flower cutter shredding silhouettes
Clinging to the river of faces
I enter the underground crowd
Learning to be like a train
Without scenery on either side
To learn about people through a metallic voice
Written after his memorial service on 14 January 2013